


carved out of time and space

by thefirewildling



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, i'm not crying you're crying, that trailer ruined me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 07:37:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8241508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefirewildling/pseuds/thefirewildling
Summary: She took to writing his name on a notebook every couple of hours, just to reassure herself, but by the end of the week, when Liam suddenly asked who Stiles was at a pack meeting and she just reached for his hand as he looked down in shame, she made sure to pick up the pace and started writing it every other hour. She’s filled an entire book with his name, and then another with his polish name just to try and keep it interesting.





	

**Author's Note:**

> okay so this was kind of rushed but i really wanted to write something about that beautiful new trailer.  
> special thanks to anyone who stayed up helping me with this, and to my lovely parabatai who proofreads everything with me and deserves a lot better than me.  
> hope you enjoy this!

Ironically, she prided herself in being able to remember almost everything.

It came as a blessing, at first, when her parents figured she could devour entire textbooks and encyclopedias just for the thrill of it and still be able to remember what she read about in those botany books at the age of seven. She liked their complicated names, to spell them out and try to read them aloud. Liked the Latin version of plants and animals. She figured that writing her own name over and over at school to improve her calligraphy just like those distorted unreadable scribbles six year olds usually do wasn’t exactly for her.

Lydia Martin could remember everything for as long as she could remember, basically.

She took to pretending, from the fifth grade and so on, because being smart didn’t exactly fit in the equation of ruling Beacon Hills High with an iron fist. People liked her looks, her boldness and the fact that she started wearing high heels to school since the beginning of the eighth grade. Her intelligence, however, was something else entirely, way too different to be socially accepted. At first, her mom feared her ginger hair would cause her to get teased but Lydia always knew that shallowness, the empty, vacant confidence and the fake smiles were the way to go. She worked her hair for her own benefit, ginger or not, it worked, and she dominated every inch of floor she walked on, all by hiding. By pretending.

But she would always remember, even if she didn’t let others know.

And these days she was just tired of having to pretend.

After finding people who accepted her as she truly was, for her smarts, for her kindness, for her selflessness, Lydia stopped caring who she was seen with or who she invited to her parties. She liked quantum physics, she liked Latin terminologies and reading scientific articles no eighteen year old had ever heard of.

Remembering always came with a price, though. In her case, one that took her years to fully accept. She remembered the good and the bad, the parties, the fake friends, all the birthday gifts, all the boyfriends. She mostly remembered her screams at night, the faces of all the corpses she had to learn to see, the dreams that didn’t let her sleep. The hole in her head.

All in all, though, she wasn't quite sure how the one person who engraved himself on her was Stiles Stilinski.

She remembered him as a boy, somewhere along the third grade, blushing at the sight of her, all cute and highly hyperactive, pale limbs and tootsie grins. She remembered all the valentines he wrote her, all the chocolates he gave her, all the infantile talks they had about who played on what in recess. She remembered the times he invited her over to do their homework together and his mom baked a cake for them, she remembered the time she stopped being invited over because his mom wasn’t doing well. She remembered the time she started ignoring him because wearing high heels was better than having real friends. The time he grew his hair over the summer and she started giving him a second look, however futile that might seem. She couldn't bring herself to forget the regretful stolen glances they seemed to share from time to time, that one time he actually bought a TV for her birthday, all the supernatural stakeouts and the sleepovers after investigations, lying barefoot in his bed, how warm his arms felt around her.

Their timing was utter shit, she could bring herself to notice it now, now that she'd finally been on the other end of where they’ve stood for years: silently suffering as she saw him with someone else.

Lydia remembered their kiss, how his eyes managed to look as bright as the sun, how he sounded like when he exhaled in what felt like the first time after coming back for air. She remembered missing him, loving him.

She felt like something was wrong with the world, with the entire universe, how could she ever even begin to forget him, him of all people, who stood by her the entire time, from the shallow girl who first went to prom with him and kept searching for someone else, to the irrepressible, Ill fitted woman who threw herself into a fire to try and get him out.

When they first came to themselves and figured what him seeing the wild hunt meant, she started collecting pictures of them. 

It felt unreal, counter all sorts of scientific reasoning that she could come to forget the person who meant most to her in life.

Parrish tried to call her a couple of times, probably to pick up that rain check on that coffee she promised him so many weeks ago. She didn't pick up. It all came clear to her, that even though it was probably too late, she didn't want, didn't need, all the extra death in their relationship.

What she needed was the person standing on the edge of existence.

 

* * *

 

 

Malia was the first the forget him.

He just escaped her, suddenly wiped away from her mind in the middle of a biology class. One moment Lydia was asking her where they were gonna meet Stiles afterwards, next she’s absolutely terrified because it was already starting to happen. He was already slipping away from her grasp.

She took to writing his name on a notebook every couple of hours, just to reassure herself, but by the end of the week, when Liam suddenly asked who Stiles was at a pack meeting and she just reached for his hand as he looked down in shame, she made sure to pick up the pace and started writing it every other hour. She’s filled an entire book with his name, and then another with his polish name just to try and keep it interesting.

As the days went by and Hayden and Mason started passing by him without giving him a second glance, she pondered whether she should tell him how she felt, how she had felt for almost a year now and how much he meant for her after everything they've been through, but then it hit her that it was probably rather unfair to lay it all on him just like that especially now of all times, like an admission that their time was ending and they and they needed to make it count. No, it wasn't like that. 

Despite it all, Lydia still had some integrity. She was going to remember him, she was going to get to keep him, and then tell him after it was all over. Instead, she did her best to spend her every moment near him, because it might be all she’s got left. 

She started sleeping at his house, and her mom didn’t dare to oppose herself to the idea because she doesn’t even remember him anymore. She steals his Lacrosse Jersey because it smelled like him, like sandalwood and soap and something else she can’t exactly place but that felt like home. Like him.

 

* * *

 

 

When his dad forgot him, about two weeks after he saw the rider for the first time, it hit her how real this was and how fast it was approaching. Never had she been more miserable or more useless as to when he came to her door and cried for hours on her lap because his own dad asked for his name. Her hands smoothed out his hair as Stiles sobbed quietly on her shoulder and Lydia found herself wondering how a human being, how Stiles Stilinski, someone who had so clearly engraved himself on time and space, on the impact he had had on their lives, could ever be taken, wiped out like he meant nothing.

“In a way I’m glad, you know?” he told her between sobs. His voice trembled, his eyes red and his cheeks wet as it all came crashing down on him, the weight of ceasing to exist. They were lying on her bed, his face hidden on the crook of her neck. Lydia buried her cheek in his hair and tried to memorize how amazing it felt.

“What do you mean?” She asked suddenly petrified by what he meant. How could he ever want them to forget him?

Stiles took a deep breath. “Last time something supernatural-related happened to me I murdered twenty people. I’m glad it’s me everyone is forgetting. I’m glad I’m not the one who has to ever forget anyone." He looked up at her, taking in how impossibly beautiful she was, how he was lucky enough to be there with her. There’s a thread tying their lives together. An anchor. He knew if that if he sank, she would go under too, no matter how hard he tried to save her. Stiles gave her a sad smile. "I don’t think I could ever live if I forgot you, Lyds.”

His words rang so deep within her, in her heart, in the core of her soul that Lydia was taken aback by a sudden outburst of love for him. She remembered Allison, she always remembered Allison in times like these, telling her for the first time what it felt like to love, how you count the seconds on the clock, how you don't breathe right till you see him.

_Him._

Stiles was who she counted the seconds for. Stiles was who she stayed in the tunnels with after her best friend died. Stiles was there every time she woke up in a God damn hospital room.

It was Stiles who moved heaven and hell and rescued her from Eichen House.

Overwhelmed by the mere presence of him, Lydia reached up and wiped the tears on his cheeks. His eyes stared back at her so luminous, so incessantly beautiful, like two pools of liquid gold.

She leaned in to kiss his forehead and left her lips close to his warm skin a moment too long, just because she could, just because he was still there with her. He gripped her hand gently and she closed her eyes at how electric, how right the touch felt.

Over the years, Lydia became highly aware that they kept playing with the thin line between just friends and whatever it was they were now, but most of the times, in times like these where she could feel his warm breath against her face and his hand enveloping her own carefully, she couldn't bring herself to care.

Next thing she knew their noses were infinitely close and almost touching and his eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks. Her heart raced and she could feel his own beating erratically under the palm she kept on his chest and suddenly he was leaning in to capture her lips with his own.

It wasn't like their first kiss, this was  tentative, unsure, their lips just barely brushing each other before coming back to meet again lovingly, pretending they had all the time in the world to know each other all over again. His lips felt soft against her own, she could feel the warmth of his hand in her hair, the gentleness of it all.

When they broke away for air, she was left to look at him in wonder as a myriad of emotions flashed over his face. He settled for a smile, the only smile she’d seen on him for weeks, as he played with the waves of her hair and set loose strands behind her ear with careful fingers.

He fell asleep before she did, somewhere between the memory recounting they now did every night for whatever reassurance it might bring them, like the time he proposed to her on third grade or the time he brought transvestites to her birthday party because he didn't want her to feel alone. They cuddle, not even for the first time over all the years they've known each other but now it felt like more: their limbs intertwined, her head over his heart.

She caressed his hair and thought about how utterly useless she felt, with nothing to ground him, nothing to ground herself.

So far she’s ended seven pens and wrote five more notebooks worth of Stiles. She feared writing the name would become meaningless so she started writing about him as well, all she could think of: his scent, how his smiles warmed her heart, how he always ate the last fry when they went to McDonald’s, how the moles on his face formed a constellation of their own.

 

* * *

 

 

Scott tattooed Stiles’ name on his forearm and Lydia started setting money aside to consider a new plan: get the fuck out of Beacon Hills while they still can.

She thought maybe that they should head anywhere, somewhere far far from the supernatural disaster that was Beacon Hills. They could take his jeep, skip a couple of days, a couple of weeks worth of school. She pictured them somewhere else, out on the road, with maps and feet sprawled out on the dashboard, taking pictures like confused but excited tourists who weren’t exactly sure of where they are but are fascinated nonetheless, always sleeping in the wide range of motels America has to offer.

Pretending like they were just normal teenagers who weren’t being hunted down by death itself.

But it was too late. The moment he saw them it was too late. They were going to take him, take him from them. From her.

She was helpless, hopeless, on the verge of collapse. It all sounded like some sort of utopia where they could run away from their demons that even she couldn't force herself to believe it, let alone him.

She hanged every single picture she could find in front of her bed. If anything, she could take comfort from the idea that she would at least find it odd to keep pictures with massive blank spaces separating her from her friends. 

Stiles stopped going to school, he became tired of having to explain he was a new kid every single day. She joined him on some days, but he insisted she kept some normality on her last year of school, which ever how much this town actually allowed them to have.

He stayed with Scott for some days but Melissa forgot him as well, and kept asking Scott to introduce her to his new friend. Staying at Lydia's turned out to be more of the same. Her mom made a checkup with her doctor because she couldn't remember her daughter ever starting dating again.

He dropped Lydia off at school and took the day to sneak up on his house while his dad was still at the station. When he found his old room entirely empty, it felt like a thousand stab wounds to the stomach. His life, all eighteen years of it, gone, erased so fast he could have barely blinked. He ran all over the house, in ragged breathing, to check the pictures, any photograph at all that might include him in the slightest. He felt his heart collapsing, his breathing uneven. When he noticed the room spiraling around, he knew he's having a panic attack. He found a picture of his mom, a large space between her and their dog and Stiles collapsed to the floor.  His first instinct is to search for his inhaler, but it's gone, just like everything else that ever belonged to him. He no longer had a place in the house he always thought as his own.

Not for the first time in his life, not even for the first time this year, Stiles found himself wishing just to lay there, let the end come and take him fast because the pain had become unbearable. When his chest started to hurt and his vision to cloud, he remembered Scott and Lydia, holding on to him with all their strength while they still could and he forced himself to calm his breathing, even out his heart, and lay on the floor. He counted his fingers again and, for the first time in what felt like forever, he wished he'd counted eleven instead of ten.

 

* * *

 

 

The day she found Scott with his hand over Stiles' old locker, she instantly knew.

_I'm alone. He's forgotten him too._

_I'm next._

The three of them had agreed to meet in the school for a pack meeting at night to try and figure out their next move, what could possibly be done. The school was their only option since meeting at each other’s house was now odd because their parents wouldn’t recognize him anymore.

Stiles was on his way there.

Stiles was on his way to meet his best friend who had just completely forgotten him.

"Scott, please tell me you-" she stopped herself before she could start screaming. She's not ready to be next. "Please tell me you remember."

He looked at her with those incredibly huge puppy eyes of him, there's a hint of despair under his tone. "I can't remember what I forgot."

She felt it coming, the end, at large, absolutely enormous steps, towering over her, engulfing her in the ignorance she'd been trying to fight since he'd first told them he had seen a rider.

She felt tears prickle at her eyes with the inevitability of it all.

No.

She was going to remember him. They were going to make through this.

"Show me your arm, Scott." She tried steadily, but her voice broke.

"Lydia, I-" he started.

She was going to lose it, she was going to go home, get her money and force Stiles into a fucking car so that they could drive off for the whole year if they had to.

"Please,” She felt the desperation cling to her like a second skin. It broke her heart, it broke her soul to see how broken Scott was, how lost he seemed. “Show me your arm."

He did. She was not surprised to see there was nothing there, no tattoo, no Stiles, but it didn't hurt any less to see.

Lydia did the only thing she could think of. She ran. She ran to get him.

She could hear Scott shouting for her to stop, asking if she felt something was wrong too but she forced her feet to keep going. There was no time left.

She found him in a parallel corridor, with his back against a locker and face hidden in his hands. She suddenly worried he'd heard them, or if he met Scott before she did.

“Stiles!” It’s enough to drive him out of his reverie.

He gave out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “You know me. Thank God, you know me.”

She took his hands in her own and nodded briefly, something tugging at her heart. “I know you. But… Everyone else is forgetting.” She didn’t have the heart to tell him Scott, Scott of all people, had forgotten him as well.

He was smart, he got what she meant. She could swear she had seen his heart shatter into a million pieces. His eyes were so golden, so sad. “You mean…?”

She nodded once more. She felt wretched, she wanted to do something to stop the pain he was feeling, anything at all. “Stiles, we have to go. We have to leave.”

His eyes glimmered with unshed tears as he stared back at her. “Leave? Leave where?”

“Anywhere. Just leave.” She paused, uncaring to how desperate she looked, how ridiculous her plan sounded said out loud. “Just you and me and your god damn jeep, Stiles. We could still make it, we could just –” The words died on her throat, she was more anguish than rationality at that point.

The hallway was dark, soundless but their heavy breathing and their defeated voices. He gripped her hand a tad tighter. “Lydia, I –” He paused, searching for the right words. “If we were ever out on the road and you suddenly forgot me, I don’t think I could handle it.”

 _I could never forget you._ She knew it, she believed it. Yet, the thought that she might fucking petrified her.

His eyes focus on something behind her. “Do you see him?” He asked her, his tone more freaked than it had been seconds before.

“See what?” She turned around and followed his gaze. She saw nothing but an empty hallway. She gripped his arm as if it meant she could keep him longer. He was staring to freak her out as well, as if she wasn’t freaked out enough. “Stiles, see what!?”

His voice was barely a whisper “The guy on the horse.”

It sent a shiver down her spine. “Stiles, if you see them –”

His eyes snapped back to her. “I know. They’re coming from me.” His hand let go of hers and cupped her cheek in a rush. “You have to get away from me, Lyds.”

She shook her head. “I’m not leaving you.”

They didn’t have enough time to argue, and neither was willing to let go of the other so they ran out of the school and towards his jeep just exactly as a clap of thunder erupted across the sky, which, supernaturally speaking, was enough to make anyone scared shitless.

They’ve barely made it inside when he gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make his knuckles white and let out a defeated sigh. “There’s no time.”

She took a sharp intake of breath, like a sudden burst of panic because it all became too real too fast. She wasn’t ready to let him go. Not now. Not ever.

He shook his head solemnly, and caught hold of her hand with one of his. “I’m not gonna make it, Lydia. They would still find me if we ran away, and you know it.”

She was having a hard time convincing herself, let alone him, but she wasn’t ready to give up on him that easily, she was not ready for any of this. “You don’t know that unless we try it! We could –”

“They’re right outside the car, Lyds. I’m not gonna make it through today.” He said it so naturally, as if he had already embraced certain death, as if all of this was just a punishment long overdue. Tears welled up in her eyes.

They kept their fingers intertwined, locked up in his jeep as if it was enough to save him from the horrors that awaited outside. He kept her hand warm inside of his while his thumb brushed the skin on the back of her hand smoothly, so naturally it felt like he’d been doing it for years now.

Lydia wished they had had years.

She looked up at him, trying to engrave him on her mind, although not quite believing how she could forget him altogether. She could barely tell his features apart because the moonlight was weak and turning on the car lights would be even more dangerous than how they were now, if that was even possible. Maybe he was afraid she would see the Wild Hunt as well. The best they could do was pretend they’re alone in the parking lot, in the whole universe. It felt like one of those last moments, the ones where they sat in silence because they’re unable to say everything there was to say.

Everything within her hurt, her heart burned with wishing she had more time to save him.

She wanted her eyes to stop welling up so that she could look at him clearly and take him all in. Wanted to reach out and touch his face, cup his jaw line lightly, tangle her free hand on his hair, kiss his temple because he was still perfectly and physically here with her, but she’s almost too afraid to move.

He kept his gaze fixed on their intertwined hands as if it was what tethered him back to reality. His face looked solemn, soft, his eyes gleamed with unshed tears he was probably trying to hold back for her sake.

But that was Stiles Stilinski for you, putting others ahead of him, even on the verge of completely being erased from existence.

There, with him, she regretted not noticing him eight years earlier.

Lydia tightened her grip on his hand because she didn’t know what else to do, it was a desperate attempt to ground herself. Stiles’ head turned to her gently and his gaze locked with hers, raw with emotion. “You’ll forget me.” He stated simply, his voice just barely a whisper, almost lost to the wind.

She shook her head vehemently. She wouldn’t, she knew she wouldn’t. How could she?

“You’re gonna forget me.” He repeated, his voice even sadder than the first time he had said it and god fucking damn it, it felt like the entire planet shifted so suddenly, it knocked her out of her feet. She had nowhere to go, nothing to hold on too. His hand found the back of her neck and held her close to him, their noses almost touching. 

“I won’t.” She breathed and she remembered all eleven notebooks she kept at home, filled with anything and everything that reminded her of him. Green met gold and Lydia felt like she was staring into the heart of a thousand supernovas. Too bright. Too beautiful. Moments away from ceasing to exist.

_Please don’t let this be the last time I see his face._

“Find some way to remember me.” His voice gained a sort of despair she wasn’t ready to hear, not now, not yet. “Please. Just remember.”

Her grip on his hand tightened as she nodded fiercely. No, she wasn’t going to forget him, she wasn’t.

A tear rolled down his cheek as he blinked.

“Remember I love you.” He stated simply, with shaky hands and a shaky voice and it rocks her at the core, reverberates the strings at her soul.

It was all he could say, all he needed to say. A litany for her to hold on. She nodded again, a sad smile on her face. He reached out to clean the tears that fell from her eyes with his thumb, but before she could say anything, before she got to say what she wanted to say for almost a year, he got dragged out of sight, almost as if he’d just faded with the background.

She’s alone in his jeep.

**Author's Note:**

> feedback would be lovely! :)  
> lydiasliles.tumblr.com


End file.
